Maybe it's a difference in location, that quote was all stuff myself and my shitty friends did growing up, and most other people I went to school with. Also in a large midwest city.
It's interesting to read these bad hot takes on why while plugging your ears
That's not the 'why' though. Plenty of people across the world grow up in similar situations as kids in the Midwest and they don't go around destroying other people's property.
I honestly think there's something really messed up about American culture. I believe you can draw a direct correlation between what I think it is - people being indoctrinated into selfishness from an early age - and behavior like that.
For context, my wife grew up in a small town in the Midwest. She used to tell me horror stories about high school and I used to dismiss them as maybe be it just being her experience and nobody else's. I changed my mind when one day we went to the wedding of a high school friend and we were sat on the same table with some people who were 'popular' in high school. Their recollection of those years were as bad as my wife's. One woman, when asked about her experience literally told me 'honestly, I try not to think about that time'.
These people grew up in a location that was by far better than my own upbringing in every possible metric: affluent town, very low crime, infinite resources when compared with my developing country schools, access to studying abroad, etc... And they fucking hated high school. That blew my mind.
But did their parents consistently love them and have a stable relationship with each other? It's well known that lack of those factors causes lifelong psychological problems in children which manifests as criminal behavior, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, and suicide, as well as perpetuating the problem to the next generation.
As you can imagine, my wife and me have had several conversations about how different our experiences going through school were. I've spotted a couple of things in particular that couldn't be more different:
1) Kids in the US tend to move around a lot
2) Schools classes are designed so that kids are with different groups every year/subject
3) Kids who want to go to college are under a lot of pressure from age 14 or so to perform flawlessly or risk their whole live plans being derailed
4) The obsession with popularity ('Prom King/Queen', etc.)
I think all of those lead to very poor bonding between kids. Sure, here and there you'll have kids that'll become life-long friends, but the vast majority of Americans I've met barely talk to high-school friends (they tend to form long-term bonds in college).
I have a theory that's one of the reasons school bullying is so prevalent in the US. Don't get me wrong, there were bullies in my school in South America too, but they were few and far apart and they usually grew out of it by 6th grade. It's easy for a bully to pick individual victims out of a school full of individuals... it's not the same when the kid they try to pick on has been friends for years with the same 10 to 15 people.
In any case, the conclusion we've come to is we don't want our kids to go through the American school system.
This is confirmed by John Bolton (I guess if you believe what he wrote in his book that the President attempted in court to block).
Trump “turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win. He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome.”
Amazon has huge warehouses in lots of states which means they have political power to threaten pulling jobs from districts or states. Google is a much softer target.
Not sure how much of a net positive Amazon jobs are. New York already refused to deal with all the demands Amazon had when it planned its HQ there. Large companies know exactly how much perceived value they bring to the table and try to make sure that society pays for it at least twice over without giving any guarantees.
"Bullshit Jobs" had a profound change on my outlook in the tech industry. Perhaps it was because I was on the heels of leaving Amazon at the time I read it, but it changed my mindset on what I should be working towards in life.
From someone who participates in this I would disagree. Bodybuilding at the highest level isn't really pushing any new boundaries. It's pretty well known 'how much' you can take (Dallas McCarver being a good example of that), and the compounds being taken aren't cutting edge or novel.
It's Novolog, Chinese HGH (because holy fuck is HGH expensive), several grams of Test and a rotating cycle of various compounds depending on which part of prep you're at, (ie wet compounds when you're putting on weight and dry compounds when you're cutting and in show prep to summarize roughly). There isn't really anything going on that isn't covered by the r/steroids wiki.
Perhaps Olympic level athletes are a better target, because bodybuilders aren't using any novel compounds, they buy what Chinese markets have available for purchase to synthesize.
Might you be keeping track of these somewhere? I'd be interested in sponsoring en masse FOIA requests (via Muckrock) of police department budget and accounting data from the largest metros to suss this out across the US.
If you made university free for everyone the Reserves would take a hit on enlistment, same with active duty but to a lesser extent. I'm a vet and those things were huge in making my choice to join, lots of family and friends, fellow service members have echoed the same.
The military is largely downsizing though in warm body count so it might not matter much anymore.
China already frequently bans non-local apps, don't they? So I'm not sure what recourse they have other than escalating this to a real trade war instead of a digital trade war.
This is in response to Chinese incursion into disputed territory that has left soldiers on both sides dead.
Talking heads in India say these measures are Sun-Tsu like and mesmerized the enemy —Obviously the talking heads are propagandists, but on the other hand this is about the skirmishes on the Himalayas.
India heavily depends on software consulting and BPO exports for its foreign currency (over 100 billion usd per year).
If China really wants to retaliate, it can sanction the WITCH companies and force any multinational who wants to be in China to not use them. This will also benefit competitors in other developing countries like Phillipines or Pakistan.
India is playing with fire here. Especially dropping out of RCEP, the risk being encircled economically.
TikTok/PUBG are "bannable" items; banning physical items that people need/use daily, most of which are made in china, will majorly backfire. The average voter doesn't care enough about these apps to raise a stink.
My take is that these markets can only take on China when the Chinese software is the significant player in the market, while they are non-essential for the fundamental functionality of a society. On the other hand, there are barely any significant Indian software on the Chinese market, while lots of American software provide non-replicable (at least not immediately) functionality (e.g. MatLab / Microsoft Office / Windows).
They could retaliate by preventing foreigners from outright owning businesses in China, or encroach on one of their bordering neighbors, or steal some IP.
I guess put another way, does everyone who moves to the US have to do this, or is it only under some circumstances?